Séminaire Alessa Geiger

The Andes are the longest mountain chain on Earth with summits reaching up to 7000 meters above sea-level. From the Tropics to the southern tip of South America, the Andes are speckled with cirque and valley glaciers sometimes merging to form Ice Caps and Ice Fields. During the last glacial cycle glaciers were more expansive. Though the timing of ice extent has been determined with significant effort at select locations, ice thickness remains poorly constrained. Particularly in the Fjords of southern Chile terrestrial geochronological data is missing for ca. 2000 km of the former Patagonian Ice Sheet western margin (extent and thickness). Likewise, though recent studies have attempted to constrain Holocene glacier dynamics in southern Chile, Argentina and Peru, the lack of a latitudinal profile of glacier extension and retreat hampers our understanding of local, regional and inter-hemispheric climate interactions. The presentation will provide new insights into glacier geometry changes in the Fjords of south-western Chile parallel to introducing the HIELO project, which aims to constrain Holocene glacier dynamics from southern Patagonia to Peru.